


If You're Gone

by fromthedeskoftheraven



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Engagement, F/M, Post-Battle of Five Armies, Song Lyrics, song inspiration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fromthedeskoftheraven/pseuds/fromthedeskoftheraven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Legolas leaves a fiancee behind when he follows Tauriel to help the dwarves (inspired by the Matchbox Twenty song)</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You're Gone

Elvish:  
_Mereth Nuin Giliath_ – Feast of Starlight _  
ionneg_ – my son _  
Aran_ – King _  
hir nín_ – my lord  
_le melin_ – I love you  
_meleth e-guilen_ – love of my life  
_hervenn nín_ – my husband

——————————————

_I think I’ve already lost you_   
_I think you’re already gone_   
_I think I’m finally scared now_   
_And you think I’m weak, I think you’re wrong_

Legolas slipped past the Elf who silently served the guests at the head table with wine and took his seat beside you under the gimlet stare of King Thranduil.

“I am sorry,” he murmured. “I only stopped to look in on the prisoners.”

“I trust all is well?” Your smile was exaggerated in its brightness for the benefit of your future father-in-law, and your entire body exhaled when at last Thranduil turned his attention elsewhere.

“Fine,” Legolas said distractedly, reaching for his glass, “everything is fine.”

A gentle arch of your eyebrows, and he replaced the glass untasted, with the exasperation he’d sought to suppress sparking in his blue eyes.

“Tauriel was speaking with one of them.”

“With a Dwarf? Why should she do that?”

“Exactly what I wish to know,” he muttered darkly.

“Surely it was nothing. Perhaps she was merely gathering information,” you offered, but he shook his head, with irritation stinging in his tone.

“What I overheard was no interrogation.”

You dropped your eyes to the tablecloth before you, cowed, and Legolas softened, reaching for your hand in your lap to clasp it in his.

“Forgive me,” he sighed. “I am as boorish as the creatures lodged in our cells. Tonight is a festive occasion…and tomorrow evening will be a joyous one.”

A flush warmed your cheeks at the allusion to the ceremony to come, and you squeezed his hand charitably as he went on.

“My father says it is most auspicious to enact a betrothal during _Mereth Nuin Giliath_ ,” he said, “that love so begun will shine as brightly and eternally as the starlight we celebrate.”

“Then may it prove true for us,” you smiled.

With a reciprocal smile, he drank from the wine in his glass while you studied him, searching his face thoughtfully.

“You _are_ happy, Legolas?”

Surprise ruffled his smooth brow. “Yes, of course. Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” you nodded quickly.

He raised your hand carelessly to his lips before a brooding look overcame him again, and a servant with laden dishes bowed between you.

_I think you’re already leaving_   
_Feels like your hand is on the door_   
_I thought this place was an empire_   
_And now I’m relaxed and I can’t be sure_

The ominous warnings of the dead orc still rang in Legolas’ ears as he walked the twisting corridors and soaring walkways of Mirkwood, awakening unfamiliar stirrings of doubt about the wisdom of his father’s motives. Nevertheless, he made his way to the gate to carry out Thranduil’s decree.

“Close the gate,” he called to the guards on duty before the palace’s yawning doors. “Keep it sealed by order of the King.”

“What about Tauriel?”

Legolas paused. “What about her?”

“She went into the forest armed with her bow and blade,” a dark-haired guard explained, with a nervous glance at his colleagues. “She has not returned.”

Legolas strode past him to gaze over the path that wandered through the trees to the light-filled clearings that beckoned from outside the forest. He hesitated, torn. Behind him, in the comfort of his father’s halls, responsibility called. He should obey, turn back, follow his father’s orders and leave Tauriel to her fate.

And yet…

If he made haste to find her he could return in time, he reasoned, pushing away the thought of your heartbreak if he should not.

If he made haste…

After a moment’s further deliberation, Legolas set his face toward the sun and walked purposefully into the wood.

_I bet you’re hard to get over_   
_I bet the room just won’t shine_   
_I bet my hands I can stay here_   
_I bet you need more than you mind_

The door closed heavily behind you as you entered the richly appointed sitting room, casting furtive glances around this chamber you’d never visited before, where amber lamps cast a golden glow and a thick, ornately woven carpet cushioned your footsteps.

“You wished to see me, _Aran_ Thranduil?” You were chagrined by the trembling of your voice.

“Indeed,” the King drawled. Even uncrowned and in his private suite, he cut an imposing figure, his pale skin and the silvery fall of his hair in sharp relief against his coat of shimmering black. He contemplated you from an armchair of glossy, carved wood before rising to his feet, his movements as fluid and graceful and inexorable as the river’s current. “It is my unfortunate duty to tell you that Legolas has chosen not to return.”

Ice seemed suddenly to have replaced the blood in your veins. “Not to return? I – I do not understand.”

“No? Then let me make it plain to you,” Thranduil went on, with an undercurrent of restrained anger. “I sent Feren to summon Legolas home, and he has scorned the forgiveness of his father and King because I would not also receive Tauriel.”

After the disruption of your betrothal and what had followed – your father’s indignance, your mother’s tears, those early, devastating days of wondering if Legolas was alive or dead – his words fell upon you like a blow.

“Tauriel,” you repeated meekly, your thoughts returning unbidden to Legolas’ agitation at the feast, his anger that Tauriel had been speaking with one of the Dwarves. “But Legolas and I…”

“You are naive,” Thranduil interjected. “Legolas abandoned you on the eve of your betrothal to follow a common Silvan Elf into folly and ruin. His actions speak to his true feelings for you…and for Tauriel.”

Hot tears prickled beneath your eyelids and you willed yourself to contain them, to preserve what remained of your dignity. Thranduil paced to the table that held an array of crystal decanters, unstopping one and filling a delicate glass with the rosy-tinted wine within.

“Be grateful you were spared the embarrassment of a public betrothal,” he said, with a more businesslike air. “You are young, fair of face, of a noble family…I have no doubt you will yet make a suitable match.”

“But I love him.” The words tumbled forth, pleading, before your pride might close your lips.

The King fixed his icy, unfathomable gaze upon you as though seeing you for the first time, and the shadow of something akin to pity crossed his face.

“Then you must learn not to,” he said quietly.

_And I think you’re so mean, I think we should try_   
_I think I could need this in my life_   
_And I think I’m scared that I know too much_   
_I can’t relate and that’s a problem I’m feeling_

Legolas stood on the summit of the tower at Ravenhill, turning his eyes away from Tauriel’s raw grief, a numb emptiness filling his chest.

With every step he had taken since that fateful day when he’d chosen to pursue Tauriel, he had consoled himself with the thought that his sacrifice to aid the Dwarves and fight the forces of encroaching evil would make the world a better one, even if in doing so he had given up the right to share it with you. Now, surrounded on all sides by loss and pain and watching Tauriel cradle the body of the dead Dwarf in her arms, the cost of his choice weighed unbearably, tormenting him with the desperate wish to flee like a child to your embrace, to rest in the refuge of your love that he’d once enjoyed…once taken for granted.

Feeling himself an intruder on Tauriel’s mourning, Legolas paced the warren of tunnels in the tower’s interior, looking grimly at the mangled bodies of Orcs the Dwarf princes had left in their wake, and found himself face to face with his father. Relief washed unmistakably over Thranduil’s face, though he remained silent, and Legolas took the opportunity to speak the resolution at which he’d arrived, though he remained uncertain whether it was brave or cowardly.

“I cannot go back.”

“You must.”

“Why?”

“Because your King commands it.”

Anger flared in Legolas, but a heated response died in his throat when Thranduil continued.

“…And because you have left something precious behind.”

Legolas sighed, suddenly bone-weary. “She will not have me now. And I cannot stand by, in dread of the day when she will give herself to another.”

The ghost of a wintry smile flickered over Thranduil’s lips. “I know something of love, and you will find that you are mistaken.” He passed Legolas to walk toward the landing where Tauriel kept vigil over her Dwarf, stopping briefly with his profile silhouetted against the cold sunshine.

“Go home, _ionneg_.”

_If you’re gone maybe it’s time to come home_   
_There’s an awful lot of breathing room but I can hardly move_   
_If you’re gone, baby, you need to come home_   
_There’s a little bit of something me in everything in you_

“My Lord Legolas,” your lady’s-maid announced.

“Thank you,” you murmured quietly, and she bowed from the room, leaving you alone in heavy silence with Legolas.

“ _Hir nín_ , I was glad to hear of your safe arrival,” you began, but your attempt at aloof formality faltered at the sound of your name on his lips, spoken softly, almost pleadingly. He walked purposefully to you, clasping your shoulders with his hands, his eyes roving your face as though he had been bidden to memorize it.

“ _Le melin_ , my heart,” he said, his hands moving more gently to cradle your cheeks as he repeated, begging you to believe him, “ _le melin_.”

Tears of anger and confusion sprang to your eyes, and you shook your head, pulling away from his caress. “But you left,” you reminded him. “You left with Tauriel on the very day we were to pledge ourselves.”

“And I shall spend the rest of my days striving to atone for causing you pain,” he vowed. “But I did not leave with Tauriel because I loved her. I left because she was right. My father would have us shut ourselves away in these halls until evil and darkness creep to our very gates, and that is no life for our people…for our children,” he added hesitantly, gauging your silent reaction to his words as you fixed your eyes on the carpet at your feet for a long moment.

Your gaze met his at last. “Shall you stay here?”

“I do not know. I thought not to come back at all,” he admitted, coming closer to take your hands softly in his, “but as long as you dwell in Mirkwood, there is yet a star to guide me home.”

“You are changed, Legolas,” you said curiously. “You have never been so tender before.”

Remorse clouded his face, and he nodded. “I have been cold with you,” he conceded, “ungenerous. I know that now. I have been silent when I ought to have spoken, spoken when I ought to have listened, turned away when I ought to have taken you in my arms and showed you the depth of my feelings.”

A small, wistful smile bloomed on your lips, finding an answer on Legolas’, and your grasp on his hands became more firm.

“I beg your forgiveness, _meleth nín_. Have you enough love left to forgive me?” His eyes searched yours. “Can you believe that wherever I may go, I wish only for you to be at my side?”

“Legolas, _meleth e-guilen_ ,” you sighed, reaching to rest your palm on his cheek. “There will never be anyone else for me.”

His face was lit with a mixture of relief and joy, and his arms encircled you to hold you close to his chest, where the beat of his heart drummed soothingly against your ear as you felt his lips pressed to the crown of your head. You looked up into his face and found only love there when he bent to meet your lips with a kiss unlike any you’d shared, filled with warmth and gratitude and newfound passion that left you breathless when you parted, exchanging shy, wonderstruck smiles.

“Marry me,” Legolas murmured, resting his forehead against yours.

“My parents were sorely distressed by our failed betrothal,” you said uncertainly. “I do not know that they will allow another chance.”

He leaned back to look into your eyes, speaking solemnly. “I care nothing for rings and ceremonies…I would become your husband this night by the pledge of my body to yours, if you wish it.”

“ _Hervenn nín_ ,” you indulged in tasting the words, and Legolas beamed to hear them from your lips.

“I am yours to command, _meleth_ ,” he whispered.

You stood on your tiptoes to kiss him once more, breathing your wish against his cheek.

“Promise you won’t leave again without me.”

“Never,” Legolas smiled fondly. “Wherever you are, I am home.”


End file.
